Hankering for satisfaction

By LESLIE FELPERIN

It is possible to admire the screen work of Tom Hanks, to enjoy most of his movies and think he's a pretty nice guy, yet still feel baffled about why he's one of the biggest box office stars of all time. He once said: "I don't threaten any man's sense of virility, or any woman's sense of security or decorum."

But that doesn't explain how a talented, photogenic actor turned into a one-man cash machine. The facts are irrefutable. Since 1992, the worldwide grosses for his films total US$5 billion ($8 billion). What is really interesting is that it's not just a matter of Hanks having been in a few huge-earning blockbusters.

His biggest hit is Forrest Gump, at US$330 million the 13th most-successful movie ever made, followed much further down the list by Toy Story 2 (US$246,000) at No 33.


The x-factor is his consistency, the way nearly all his films make a lot of money - from his breakthrough hit Big (1988), where he played a 12-year-old bewitched into a man's body, to Cast Away, in which his shipwrecked survivor doesn't even speak for an hour. The Bonfire of the Vanities was a flop, but all but two of his films have grossed US$100 million in the past decade.

However, it might be that the famous Hanks fairy-dust is finally starting to lose a little sparkle. Even though Road to Perdition, in which he was cast against type as a cruel hitman, made US$160 million, critics thought it a disappointment.

And The Ladykillers, in which Hanks gives a deliciously ripe performance for the Coen Brothers, only just made its money back with a take of US$60 million.

Then there's The Terminal. You would think it would have been a surefire hit, given it stars Hanks and was directed by Steven Spielberg, with whom Hanks has worked twice on Saving Private Ryan and Catch Me If You Can.

But the film, in which Hanks plays an immigrant from a made-up Eastern European country who is stranded in JFK airport when a coup invalidates his passport, performed relatively poorly when it came out in the United States in June.

It opened the Venice Film Festival last week, and the fact that Hanks was available for newspaper and television interviews is an indication that they're trying to give the movie an extra push for its wider international release.

It comes up quickly that the movie has underperformed, and Hanks has the answer ready. "Well, audience reaction is a very fickle thing," he says. "An awful lot of it is timing, to some degree.

"I would love to blame the marketing department, but you can't blame the marketing department for everything. It either lands in the consciousness of the people for that exact time or it doesn't.

"Now, with The Terminal, it could very well be that we just landed in the wrong time. We're making this movie about a post-September 11 world and it's about an airport, and there are all these things that just can't hit the American consciousness in the right way."

Hanks is keen to emphasise that it's not just about the money. "If you start trying to second-guess the box-office performance of your choices, then I'd be here promoting Forrest Gump 4 instead," he says.

"Steven Spielberg has made a number of movies which you could call poor under-performers at the box office, but does that mean he shouldn't make a Minority Report or an Amistad? Or I'm not going to make The Ladykillers with the Coen brothers?"

For all it's problems - too long, too sugary-sweet - The Terminal does rest on a compelling conceit about the weirdness of airports, the peculiar atmosphere of these non-places where people wait or rush but never live. When was the last time Hanks had to wait in an airport?

"Well, quite frankly, I fly in private planes," he admits, somehow managing not to sound impossibly smug about it. "I don't want to burst your bubble, but I don't want to lie either.

"But I do remember in Chicago once I was on the ground for four hours and there were fist-fights back in the coach.

"All the liquor was gone, the businessmen were drunk, and the stewardesses were locking themselves in the cockpit so they wouldn't have to deal with us any more. I finished my book. What do you do when you're on a plane so long you get to finish your book?"

Things are considerably more comfortable for Hanks now.

"We were going home from the festival opening, Steven and I. There was a moon and we're in this boat going back to Venice and we both looked at each other and said, 'How did we end up being here?'

"But there are some days when you're on your ninth city and they don't like your film. You wonder why you're knocking yourself out.

"I'm 48. I've been doing it for a long time. It started off as this huge adventure. It became this hideous job for a while, but that stuff is all gone now. I can't believe I'm still being invited to things like this."

I ask Hanks if he would ever consider doing a low-budget movie. "Oh yeah," he says nonchalantly. "There are a lot of things coming up that will be 'quote-unquote' low-budget films."

He doesn't go into specifics but is soon off at a tangent, rambling a little.

"I'm not interested in these iconographic movies. I'm not interested in these kind of dimensional characters in which a bad guy is very specifically a bad guy and a good guy is very specifically a good guy.

"Even the most popular movies of the year, I go to see them and they're frigging boring to me because a bad guy is a bad guy and the good guy is a good guy and the good guy almost loses but he still wins. The vast majority of movies that come out right now are aggressive, angry and dark, and cynical.

"There are times when I really want to see a movie that is honestly cynical and honestly angry. But the vast majority are not honestly angry and not honestly cynical, they just kind of have this attitude that bores me as a cinemagoer and certainly bores me as an actor."

Funny that Hanks should mention being bored. What did he mean earlier, about the times when his job was hideous? "Well, it seemed like there was a period where it seemed like all I did was work and then talk about myself and talk about the movies we had made.

"I couldn't get past the fact that my kids were growing up without me. I got to the point of thinking how much self-analysis could I go through, going out and promoting these movies?

"But I think there was a period of time when I worked too much. I made too many films. And I worked too much because I thought they would never ask me to make any more movies, so every one that comes along I've got to say yes to, so it gets to be like 'what movie am I promoting today? I can't remember'."

There's a mischievous twinkle in his eye now. "Now I'm much more selective and specific and I have countless conversations with, for example, my crack team of showbusiness representatives, and they say, 'So what did you think of it?'

"And I say I cannot dedicate a year of my life making a movie and then going off and selling it and talking about this big fat piece of shit. I can't do it. Forgive me.

"And that becomes very important to me, so I can't take a job unless I know I'm going to be able to come out and be honest with you guys and so, you know, there you have it."

Hanks is either sincere or truly a great actor, because I actually believe he means that.

On screen

* Who: Tom Hanks, former box-office champ

* What: The Terminal, The Ladykillers

* When: Screening at cinemas now

- INDEPENDENT